NPR Transcript - How evolution is taught in the classroom

Host: Ira Flatow with S. Meyer, K. Miller, L. Krauss & D. Ownes-Fink

IRA FLATOW, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY. I’m Ira Flatow.

Efforts to influence how evolution is taught in the classroom has been picking
up steam lately. This month, the nation’s largest scientific organization,
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, passed a resolution
urging policy-makers to oppose teaching what is called the ‘intelligent
design’ theory within science classrooms. Rather, it urged educators to
keep it separate and treat it the same way that creationism and other religious
teachings are handled. Critics of intelligent design say it is just creationism
in new clothing.

The science organization was acting in response to two recent challenges to
the teaching of evolution in the classroom, one in Ohio and one in Georgia.
In Ohio, new proposed guidelines for teaching evolution in science class don’t
mention intelligent design specifically but call for science teachers to include
lessons that, quote, “describe how scientists continue to investigate
and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” In Georgia’s
Cobb County, the school board decided in March that science textbooks used in
middle and high schools must carry stickers saying that, quote, “evolution
is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.” The American
Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in response.

This hour, a look at the new challenges to teaching evolution in the classroom.
What should or shouldn’t be included in science curricula? If you’d
like to get in on our conversation, our number is 1 (800) 989-8255, 1 (800)
989-TALK.

Let me introduce my guests. Kenneth Miller is a professor of biology at Brown
University in Providence. He’s also the author of “Finding Darwin’s
God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution,”
published by Cliff Street Books, and the co-author of what many science teachers
call the “Dragonfly Book.” It’s a widely used high school
biology textbook. He joins us by phone from El Paso, Texas. Welcome back to
SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Miller.

FLATOW: You’re welcome. Stephen Meyer is the director and a senior fellow
at the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute. He’s
also the co-author of the forthcoming book, “Darwinism, Design and Public
Education,” to be published by Michigan State University Press. He joins
us from the studios of member station KUOW in Seattle. Thank you for joining
us.

FLATOW: Lawrence Krauss is a professor of physics and professor of astronomy
at Case Western Reserve University. He’s also the author of many popular
science books, including, “Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life
on Earth...and Beyond,” published by Little Brown & Company. He joins
us by phone from Cleveland. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Krauss.

Dr. LAWRENCE KRAUSS (Case Western Reserve University): It’s great to
be back.

FLATOW: Let’s talk about the Ohio revision in the proposed standards.
Stephen, are you going to tell us about the history of that?

Dr. MEYER: Sure. We had a kind of spirited debate back in March before the
board. Dr. Krauss and Dr. Miller debated a biology colleague of mine, Dr. Wells,
and myself, and at that hearing, we proposed a compromise to the state board.
There were many people in Ohio who were advocating that the theory of intelligent
design be mandated as part of their state testing standards, and we at Discovery
Institute are affiliated with a number of the scientists, such as Michael Behe
and William Dembski, who are advocating the theory of intelligent design.

But we proposed that instead of asking the board to mandate that, that instead
they consider looking at some of the scientific problems that exist with Darwinian
theory and focus their attention for the purpose of their state testing standards
on Darwinian evolution. We think that students should know about Darwinian evolution,
they should know the evidential case for it, but they should also know some
of the significant scientific difficulties that are now being discussed openly
in the biological literature about the theory.

FLATOW: Larry Krauss, what’s wrong with that?

Dr. KRAUSS: Well, that’s not, of course, what was asked for. What was
asked for was to teach the controversy. That was the soundbite that was used.
And the point is there isn’t a controversy in the scientific literature
at all about evolution. Evolution is the basis of modern biology as the AAAS
indicated in their resolution. And, in fact, the board very clearly indicated
their intent, that the intent in talking about this language was not to encourage
people to include intelligent design. It’s language which is otherwise
innocuous because scientists are continuing to critically investigate and analyze
all theories, Newton’s laws and all sorts of other theories. It’s
sad, unfortunately, that appears just in evolutionary science because it gives
lobbying organizations, like the one that Steve Meyer is a member of, to the
soundbite that they can use to try and indicate or suggest that it encourages
this debate. In fact, what it’s meant to do is encourage students to think
about science. And intelligent design, by all objective standards, has nothing
to do with science.

FLATOW: Kenneth Miller, you want to ring in on this?

Dr. MILLER: Yeah. I think the easiest way to ring in on this is simply to point
out the three critical elements of the resolution that the AAS, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest scientific organization
in the world, announced yesterday. And I’ll just go through them very
quickly because they’re very short. They wrote, ‘The intelligent
design movement has failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support
its claims. The intelligent design movement has not proposed a scientific means
of testing its claims. And therefore, it is resolved that the lack of scientific
warrant for so-called intelligent design theory makes it improper to include
as a part of science education.’ And I think that that depicts the consensus
within the scientific community very well.

FLATOW: Yet Stephen Meyer was saying that teachers should be teaching that
there are flaws in the evolutionary theory here. Are there no flaws?

Dr. MEYER: Could I make that point?

FLATOW: Yes, go ahead.

Dr. MEYER: You know, Dr. Krauss says there is no controversy. Well,there are
many controversies. There are controversies about the sufficiency of the Darwinian
mechanism, natural selection, acting on random variation. I was reading a paper
last night by a paleontologist from the Smithsonian named Doug Erwin, who was
writing an evolutionary biology journal. As I’m pointing out, these problems
are openly discussed in the scientific literature. And Dr. Erwin was making
the point that it is difficult to envision how microevolutionary processes can
be extrapolated to explain large-scale macromutational, macroevolutionary events,
the origin of major body plans, such as emerged in what’s called the Cambrian
explosion, the origin of new insects, the origin of the major plant groups.
This is a problem that has been widely noted that there is not a sufficient
mechanism to produce this new form.

Other people have been investigating not the minute, tiny changes that microevolution
talks about, but the macroevolutionary mutation, big jump mutations. Last week
in Science, an article discussing a conference on developmental biology quoted
a developmental biologist, William Jeffrey, saying macroevolution is really
at a dead end. He was talking in context about the attempt to solve a problem
of the origin of new form by talking about big jump type of mutations as opposed
to the small, minute microevolutionary mutations.

Either way, there’s a problem here, and people are discussing this openly.
And what we’re asking for in Ohio is nothing more and nothing less than
allowing the students of Ohio to know and the teachers to discuss openly these
same difficulties that are being discussed openly in the scientific literature.

Dr. KRAUSS: Can I jump in for a second?

FLATOW: Sure.

Dr. KRAUSS: First of all, what the curriculum is for is--teachers are free,
in fact, to talk about whatever they want in a classroom. What the curriculum
is for is to say: What are students required to learn? And the issues, of course,
that Steve Meyer was just talking about could be talked about in the context
of any science. People are looking at whether Newton’s one over r-squared
force law works on large distances and in galaxies,for example. But we don’t
suggest, in fact, and we don’t argue that Newton’s laws are fundamentally
flawed and students shouldn’t learn them in physics class.

The point is that evolution is the basis of modern biology. There are certainly
issues and important issues that remain to be resolved. But the fact that we
don’t know everything is not an excuse to suggest that we don’t
know anything, and groups such as Stephen Meyer’s--Phil Johnson, who’s
been long an advocate of that organization, right after Ohio put this language
in, which I agree sounds reasonable, to critically analyze aspects of evolutionary
science, came out and said, ‘Ohio’s decisions allow for the ba--is
a victory in the battle to free science classes from the grip of Charles Darwin.’
What these people have is an agenda, a religious agenda, and they couch it in
what looks like scientific language, except they don’t have the courage
to publish generally in the scientific literature. In 10 million articles in
science journals over the past 12 years, the key words ‘intelligent design’
appeared only 88 times, and all but 11 of them were in engineering articles.

Dr. MEYER: Excuse me. That’s really a cheap debater’s trick. As
we discussed at the Ohio board meeting, the theory of intelligent design, first
of all, which is not the main issue here, is a new theory, and it is being advanced
in the same way that new theories in the history of science have always been
advanced, and that is by peer-reviewed books. And the two main and most important
books that are seminal to the intelligent design movement, “The Design
Inference” by William Dembski, published by Cambridge University Press,
and Michael Behe’s book, “Darwin’s Black Box,” were
both peer reviewed and that is one of the reasons there is interest in this
new theory. But that’s not...

FLATOW: Dr. Meyer, you have me at a loss here, because I always thought that
the way science was advanced was in peer-reviewed journals...

Dr. KRAUSS: Exactly.

FLATOW: ...not in peer-reviewed books where you publish...

Dr. MEYER: Well, let me name some important peer-reviewed books that
started new scientific revolutions.

FLATOW: No, no. Wait. Well, I mean...

Dr. MILLER: But, Ira...

Dr. MEYER: But that’s not...

FLATOW: We’re talking about science today.

Dr. MILLER: Exactly. And, Ira, you’re quite right about that.

Dr. MEYER: Now wait a minute. I don’t concede that. I don’t concede
that point.

Dr. MILLER: ...(Unintelligible) interesting about what Dr. Meyer...

Dr. MEYER: In the history of science, if you look at the books that have been
published that start seminal new theories, go back to “The Principia”
with Newton or the “Starry Messenger” with Galileo or “The
Origin of Species” with Charles Darwin.

Dr. MILLER: ...(Unintelligible).

Mr. MEYER: Theories are advanced in books because books are a medium that allows
enough space to create the whole superstructure for a theory.

Dr. MILLER: Dr. Meyer, I will take your point...

Dr. MEYER: Scientific journal articles...

Dr. MILLER: ...I will take your point about the book, but I’ll point
out something else to you. And that is that the way in which science advances
is not by publishing a few books and then petitioning agencies of government
to insert an idea into the curriculum that has not won scientific support. The
way in which scientific ideas advance is in the free and open marketplace of
ideas within the scientific community. And as Dr. Krauss pointed out, intelligent
design...

Dr. MEYER: We completely agree with you, Ken. Yeah.

Dr. MILLER: Excuse me. Excuse me. As Dr. Krauss pointed out, intelligent design
advocates have been notorious in the respect in the ways in which they have
avoided informed scientific audiences, scientific meetings and scientific discussion.
What they’ve tried to do instead is to run directly to the agencies of
government, elected boards of education, state legislatures, to get their ideas
written into curricula as a matter of law, and that simply isn’t the way
that science advances.

Dr. MEYER: Well, we agree with you, Ken, and this is one of the reasons that
we asked--certainly there were political supporters of design in Ohio who are
getting the cart before the horse. That’s one of the reasons we took the
theory off the table for the purposes of the state testing standards. We understand
that this is a new theory. We think it’s unrealistic to think that teachers
would be able to be informed enough to teach it well at this point, and so we
said, ‘Look, the main focus,’ as you have said, ‘of biological
research is evolutionary theory. Let’s look at that openly and in a critical
manner.’

Dr. MILLER: I couldn’t agree more.

Dr. MEYER: And there...

Dr. MILLER: I think that’s fine.

Dr. MEYER: And that means then that some of the well-known evidential difficulties
of the theory need to be part of the instruction, not a sanitized version for
public consumption.

FLATOW: Are there not local boards in Ohio that are now putting it into their
curriculum?

Dr. MILLER: Intelligent design?

FLATOW: Yes.

Dr. MILLER: Yeah. As a result of this, one local board has indicated that they
want to do this. In fact, there was a concerted effort from the Discovery Institute
to influence people to say that this was a victory to insert such non-scientific
ideas into the curriculum. And it...

Dr. MEYER: Certainly we didn’t say it was a non-scientific idea, Ken.

Dr. MILLER: Well, no, you didn’t. I did.

Dr. MEYER: We did not do that. You’re putting words in our mouth.

Dr. MILLER: Yeah. No, no, that’s right.

Dr. MEYER: But look, one thing we do affirm. We think that teachers do have
the right to discuss with students alternative theories such as they exist within
the scientific community.

Dr. MILLER: Absolutely.

Dr. MEYER: The scientific community is not just defined by the AAAS’s
latest statement. It includes people like Michael Behe and William Dembski.
And here’s an example that makes my point. A recent article by a biologist
named Professor Schneider, who is writing in Nucleic Acid journal. He discusses
Behe’s argument very clearly, and he says, ‘You know, Behe has some
very good points here.’ He calls his objections to standard models valid.
And then what he purports to do is to set out to answer Behe’s objections.
Now suppose you’ve got a bright kid cruising the Web, maybe he’s
a staunch Darwinist, maybe he’s an intelligent design zealot--either way,
he gets ahold of this paper and he brings it into his classroom, and he says,
‘Look, here’s an interesting scientific paper responding to Michael
Behe. Can we talk about that?’ What’s the teacher supposed to say?

Dr. MILLER: You’re allowed to talk about it now. The curriculum does
not forbid you...

Dr. KRAUSS: Of course you can talk about it.

Dr. MEYER: Well, that’s the point. That’s the point that the board
made in allowing a local option for this. That’s...

Dr. KRAUSS: No. But it’s true in all of science. What the science curriculum
provides is what students should know to be educated citizens, and teachers
are free, of course, to discuss extra things. But, you know, take an example
in physics.

FLATOW: Wait, wait, wait.

Dr. KRAUSS: There are many modern...

FLATOW: Well, I’m going to have to hold you. Larry...

Dr. KRAUSS: Sorry.

FLATOW: I’m going to have to hold you...

Dr. KRAUSS: Yeah.

FLATOW: ...because we’re going to have to take a break.

Dr. KRAUSS: OK.

FLATOW: And you’ll get the floor when we come back.

Dr. KRAUSS: OK.

FLATOW: So stay with us. We’ll be right back after this short break.
I’m Ira Flatow, and this is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR
News.

We’re talking this hour about teaching evolution and alternative ideas
about the origin of life in science classes. Now joining us by phone to tell
us how the Ohio Board of Education came to this decision is Deborah Owens-Fink.
She’s a board member of the Ohio Board of Education and re-elected--Is
that right?

Professor DEBORAH OWENS-FINK (University of Akron, Ohio Board of
Education): That is correct, for a four-year term.

FLATOW: And assistant professor of marketing and international business at
the University of Akron. Thanks for being with us, Ms. Fink. Why did the board
take the position it did in the Ohio school system?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: I think that one of the things that we recognize with this
issue is we go along a standards-based movement in terms of what we are going
to put in our curriculum, that part of that process is engaging the public,
engaging scientists, engaging members of the scientific community, but also
these need to be Ohio standards. We received over 20,000 comments with respect
to the teaching of evolution in state schools. With respect to that, there was
also a Plain Dealer poll suggesting that only 8 percent of Ohioans wanted the
Ohio standard to teach only evolution; another percent, 8 percent, said teach
only intelligent design. The vast majority, 82 percent, said teach either both
or teach the evidence both for and against evolution, but not necessarily intelligent
design.

FLATOW: Did they say to teach it in the science class?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: That question was asked in the poll, basically from the perspective
of where it was taught. I don’t really think that that is the issue. The
issue when we look at integrated curriculum, I am not an advocate of saying,
‘This can be discussed in this classroom. We walk across the hall, and
we’re not going to discuss it in this classroom.’ I think that we
draw those distinct boundaries perhaps as instructors, but I’m not sure
in the students’ mind, that’s really irrelevant.

FLATOW: Were science teachers in the schools happy with that decision about
the possibility of teaching in their science classes?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: We have not polled them, so I wouldn’t really have
the answer to that.

FLATOW: So you don’t know whether the public really wanted it in the
science classes or not and you don’t know whether they were happy with--the
science teachers were happy...

Prof. OWENS-FINK: Actually, the question was posed as follow. The Ohio Board
of Education is debating new academic standards for public school science classes,
including what to teach students. Which position do you support? So when the
question was posed to the public, it was posed within the framework, ‘Would
this be taught in science classes?’ So from the public’s perception,
they were very comfortable with teaching both within the science classrooms.

FLATOW: That means any alternate theory about evolution could be taught in
the classroom?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: The question was posed with respect to intelligent design
and controversies within evolution.

FLATOW: So that if people said, ‘Well, you know, there are aliens that
came down and, you know, created life on Earth,’ that would be taught
also?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: When we talk about an intelligent designer, no one is speculating
at this point what that intelligent designer was. Obviously, there are some
people that think it was a deity of some type, but then there are other people--believe
it or not, some scientists--that actually--you know, Hoyle, for example, that
does not rule out that theory that you just mentioned. So the question--but
let’s also go back to what the board decided. The board listened to literally
10 months of public input, very patiently, from both sides of this issue. We
had the debate that you’re very aware of with actually the members that
you have on your show today that 1,500 people came to listen to. The fact that
this is
even being debated on NPR today shows that why shouldn’t students also
hear about this kind of debate that we heard in Veterans Memorial back in the...

FLATOW: But we’re not doing a science class now.

Prof. OWENS-FINK: You know, when we talk about the evidence for and against
evolution within the scientific domain, that is what the board passed. We also,
though, did not preclude if individual districts wanted to also look at alternative
theories.

FLATOW: And so this is just a proposal. This has to be passed, finalized, correct?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: It was voted on unanimously by the board last month, we have
been listening to public testimony again this month, and we will be voting on
it in its final format in December.

FLATOW: And do you think that we’ll have the same vote basically?

Prof. OWENS-FINK: Yes, I do.

FLATOW: All right. Thank you very much for joining us.

Prof. OWENS-FINK: Thank you.

FLATOW: Deborah Owens-Fink, who is on the Ohio Board of Education. She’s
an elected member of the board and assistant professor of marketing and international
business at the University of Akron.

Let me bring back my other guests. Stephen Meyer is the director of the Center
for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Kenneth Miller is professor
of biology at Brown University in Providence. Lawrence Krauss is profess of
physics and a professor of astronomy at Case Western Reserve University.

Larry, I interrupted you before the break.

Dr. KRAUSS: Well, yes.

FLATOW: I’ll give you the first shot at reacting to Ms. Fink.

Dr. KRAUSS: Yeah. OK. Thanks. Well, the point is Ms. Fink is absolutely right
that evolution pushes many popular buttons, and it’s clearly, due to the
strong efforts of various lobbying groups, become an issue of social controversy.
But the point is it isn’t an issue of controversy in the scientific community,
and it’s not the job of the Science Standards Committee to react to public
reaction, but it’s their job to promote scientific literacy.

FLATOW: Well...

Dr. KRAUSS: And, you know, for example, in that...

FLATOW: Well...

Dr. KRAUSS: ...same poll that she referred to, almost 40 percent of Ohioans
said that they felt the Earth was 10,000 years old or less. There’s lots
of public polls. Fifty-two percent of Americans don’t know the Earth orbits
the sun. It takes a year to do it. If we’re going to respond to—what
we’re responding to, in fact, is largely scientific ignorance among the
public and it’s the job to improve the public’s knowledge of science,
not to respond to their ignorance.

FLATOW: Well, let me bring up a point that I think was a good one made by Stephen
Meyer and Ms. Fink and actually answers your point here. I mean, if people have
heard so much about this controversy and if they hear about it in their homes,
with their friends, with their relatives and just on the street, where would
be a better place than in a science class to look at the controversy and say,
‘You know, this may be an interesting theory, but it’s not science’...

Dr. KRAUSS: Well...

FLATOW: ...and explain why it’s not in science class?

Prof. KRAUSS: Ira, if I may, let me answer that one.

FLATOW: Yes.

Prof. KRAUSS: Because the number 84 percent here is interesting. Deborah Owens
thinks that when questions were put to voters in Ohio or to citizens in Ohio
in a poll, teach one, teach the other or teach both, 84 percent of the people
said teach both. Now I suspect that that number comes from a very simple source
and that is the sort of broad sense in the American public that you want to
hear both sides of anything. In other words, it’s not an endorsement of
one view or another.

And there was a more significant and a much more interesting poll that was
carried out in September by the University of Cincinnati’s Public Opinion
Laboratory. And what they did was they asked members of the public in Ohio the
following question: Do you happen to know anything about the concept of intelligent
design? And of the people asked, 84 percent said no, didn’t know anything
about it. Only 14 percent said yes. And what that means in a sense is the 84
percent in Deborah Owens-Fink’s poll are responding to this general idea,
‘Oh, there’s two sides, let’s hear both sides of the issue.’

Dr. MILLER: And Lawrence Krauss has made an excellent and important point, and
that is that by adopting a curriculum that says, ‘Let’s tell students
about cell biology, let’s tell students about biochemistry, let’s
tell students about astronomy and also about evolution,’ there’s
nothing in adopting a curriculum that prevents teachers from bringing controversies
about anything. And one of the important controversies in physics right now—students
don’t always hear about this--is that physics lacks a satisfactory formulaic
law of friction. And there’s enormous controversy in the friction field
among material physicists. Should students know that? Sure. Does that upset
the basic principles of physics? Absolutely not.

And when, for example, Dr. Meyer started to quote from three or four papers
that he said pointed out the controversy in evolution, what he did, very interestingly,
for your audience on SCIENCE FRIDAY, was to adopt a tactic that he also used
in front of the Ohio Board of Education. And he said he held in his hand a bibliography
of 40 peer review articles that he said questioned aspects or key tenets of
Darwinian theory that is part of the growing dissenting opinion that forms the
controversy. Well, when people got their hands on these articles, it turns out
none of them included research by proponents of intelligent design theory; none
of them included discussion of design vs. apparent design; and there wasn’t
a single article that challenged the basic elements of evolutionary theory.

Dr. MEYER: Wait a second.

Prof. KRAUSS: I suspect when I...

Dr. MEYER: We didn’t claim to the contrary.

Prof. KRAUSS: Let me finish my sentence. When...

Dr. MEYER: We didn’t claim to the contrary.

FLATOW: Stephen, let him...

Prof. KRAUSS: ...I suspect ...(unintelligible) go back to the library...

Dr. MEYER: ...(Unintelligible).

FLATOW: Stephen, let him finish, then you can respond.

Prof. KRAUSS: Just let me finish the sentence. I suspect very much when I get
a chance to go back to the library at my university and I pull out the three
articles that you quoted today, we’re going to find exactly the same thing.
Within evolution, as with any other scientific field, there’s enormous
controversy, debate, it’s free, it’s open, it’s exciting,
but not a single one of those articles would actually support intelligent design
or challenge the basic elements of evolutionary theory.

FLATOW: All right, Stephen Meyer.

Dr. MEYER: Well, first of all, we made very clear when we presented the annotated
bibliography that this is, exactly as you said, critiqued key tenets of the
theory. And the problem with the Darwinian mechanism has been duly noted since
the 1960s and it is a very grave problem, the Cambrian Explosion.

Prof. KRAUSS: There is not a problem with the mechanism.

Dr. MEYER: Yes, there is a problem with the mechanism.

Prof. KRAUSS: It’s a problem with how the mechanism works.

Dr. MEYER: No, it’s a problem with as to whether or not it’s sufficient
to produce the form and function that we see in biological systems. A minute
ago, we had a point where we were almost converging on a consensus, that people
ought to be free to be able to discuss difficulties with the theory. And, indeed,
by the way, we accept the principle that this is a way of teaching all theories.
I used this as an example when I was in Ohio, the idea that if there’s
a debate in a history class and you’re learning about the New Deal, you
should not teach only the Republican or the Democratic view of that, but you
should teach the controversy about that. That applies to all science...

Prof. KRAUSS: So would you support...

Dr. MEYER: But let...

Prof. KRAUSS: ...changing that language and taking out evolution and just putting
it in a location in a science standard where, say, students should be encouraged
to examine how scientists are critically examining all scientific theories?

Dr. MEYER: Exactly. I...

Prof. KRAUSS: Which would be a very good place to put it and not have it in
evolution.

Dr. MEYER: I think...

Prof. KRAUSS: Would you support that?

Dr. MEYER: I think there is a very important reason to stipulate that evolution
theory be included within that policy, which is actually what was done in Georgia,
apart from the sticker issue, and that is that teachers do not have the freedom
that you just asserted they have a minute ago. Let me tell you a story. Here
in Washington state, there was a teacher in Bellingham named--Burlington...

Prof. KRAUSS: Roger DeHart.

Dr. MEYER: ...named Roger DeHart. He brought into his classroom an article
by Stephen Jay Gould explaining that the famous Haeckle embryos were misdrawn,
that they’re not accurate, that the earliest stages of embryological development
are not profoundly similar in these different classes of organisms and that
this is not a piece of supporting evidence for Darwinian theory. He was told
he could not bring that article into the classroom, and there was a lot of rumbling
about potential lawsuits and the like.

A lot of teachers are very afraid to bring the same kind of critical and open
approach to this subject that they would to any other subject. And I think it
was very wise, therefore, for the board to stipulate that evolution be included
in that designation as something that could be critically analyzed.

Additionally, both...

Prof. KRAUSS: It wasn’t included. It was only there. It’s only
there.

Dr. MEYER: That’s right. It was stipulated. Additionally I think both
of my worthy opponents here are underestimating the extent to which there is
scientific dissent about this theory. It wasn’t just that Deb Owens and
the Ohio Board got 20,000 letters from ordinary people. They also received testimony
from Ohio scientists who are skeptical of evolutionary theory.

Fifty-five of them have now signed a statement expressing...

FLATOW: When you say they’re skeptical, you say they don’t believe
in it or they believe that there are problems that need to be worked out?

Dr. MEYER: Both. That is...

FLATOW: They don’t believe at all in evolutionary theory?

Dr. MEYER: ...one or the other.

Prof. KRAUSS: No, it certainly ...(unintelligible), Ira.

Dr. MEYER: Some scientists have--May I answer the question here? Some scientists
have adopted the posture that there are difficulties with particular tenets.
For example, the theory of universal common descent or the idea that mutation
selection is sufficient to produce things like molecular machines. Others think
that the way of evidence has gotten to the point that they’re skeptical
of the theory wholesale. Either way, there is a controversy, and there have
been public statements signed by scientists, 50 in Ohio, a hundred nationwide,
30-some in Georgia, expressing their skepticism about key tenets of the theory.

Prof. KRAUSS: And ...(unintelligible) 40,000 people.

Dr. MEYER: That is part of the scientific community.

FLATOW: What was that?

Prof. KRAUSS: I mean, the point is you can always find a dozen people here,
a handful of people there. The American Association for the Advancement of Science
is the largest association of science in the world with almost 40,000 members.
And it’s worldwide. And they don’t view there is a controversy.
The National Academy of Sciences has come out and said there isn’t a controversy.
I mean, you can always--if you’re looking for fringe elements, you can
always find them. And you can argue, as Stephen Meyers and other people have
done very effectively because they have convinced, I believe, the public that
there is a controversy. But they do it by picking and choosing and not getting
involved in open and free debate in scientific organizations. I mean, Dembski
is a member of AAAS and could freely to go that meeting.

But recently I got an e-mail from Wes Elsberry, who’s a PhD candidate
in wildlife and fisheries sciences at Texas A&M who’s been on several
panels on naturalism, theism and scientific enterprise, who tried to attend
a meeting on research and progress in intelligent design, tried to register
for that, and everything right up through until he got a call from the organizer
and said, ‘No, no, it was a closed conference. They didn’t want
people who disagreed to be part of the conference.’ And that’s not
science. That’s not the way science is done.

Dr. MEYER: Yeah, the...

FLATOW: All right. Well, let me--I have to remind everybody that I’m
Ira

Flatow, and this is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR News.

OK. Who is it?

Prof. KRAUSS: Ira...

Dr. MEYER: I was being attacked. Can I jump back in here?

Prof. KRAUSS: Stephen, you’re not being attacked. This is a discussion.

Dr. MEYER: Oh, I enjoy it, guys. This is...

FLATOW: Well, can I get a phone call? How about some phone calls because there
are a lot of interesting people you’d probably want to talk to.

Dr. MEYER: Can I make one quick point, Ira?

FLATOW: Could you do it quickly?

Dr. MEYER: Very quickly. Very quickly.

FLATOW: I know ‘quick’ is a relative term here. Is relativity OK
to talk about?

Dr. MEYER: Yeah. Relativity is cool.

FLATOW: That’s kosher? All right.

Dr. MEYER: I think probably Krauss and I both agree about relatively.

FLATOW: Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but go ahead.

Dr. MEYER: OK. Look, you know, next year there’s two major books coming
out, university presses. Michigan State University Press has got a book coming
out. The peer review is in the book, the case for and again Darwinism and for
design are made with critics giving it their best shot. Cambridge University
Press has a book debating design. Ken and I are both in that book.

FLATOW: So in the book, are there experiments that are in the book that will
tell us how to prove whether there’s God or not?

Dr. MEYER: No, that’s not the nature of this thing. That’s not
the nature of this thing.

FLATOW: Well, of course, that’s how you want to frame it. But I’m
asking...

Dr. MEYER: No, no, no, no, no.

FLATOW: ...you, intelligent design says there’s an intelligent designer.
Maybe ‘God’ is the wrong term for it. I’ll use it because
of a lack--a Martian or some other intelligent designer. Is there is a set of
experiments in any of those books by any of the folks who will tell us to prove
one way or the other, do these experiments, and we’ll have evidence, like
we would in a peer reviewed paper, to show that there is an intelligent designer
somehow?

Dr. MEYER: Yeah, there’s an evidential case ...(unintelligible).

FLATOW: No, no. I said are there experiment--I’m not retrospective...

Dr. MEYER: Well, this discipline is retrospective. Darwin didn’t do experiments.
He made observations...

FLATOW: And his observations made predictions about...

Dr. MEYER: This is historical science.

Prof. KRAUSS: Exactly, Ira.

FLATOW: ...the future. And that’s what science is. Science...

Dr. MEYER: No, he...

Prof. KRAUSS: That’s right.

FLATOW: ...makes predictions about the future that you can test.

Dr. MEYER: No, historic...

FLATOW: Do you--I’m asking you a question. You can say, you know, disagree
with me, but you’re...

Dr. MEYER: You think you’re onto something, but you’re not. You
don’t understand the nature of the beast.

FLATOW: There are a lot of better debaters than me who’ve tried this.
I don’t think I’m onto anything. I’m just asking you a simple
question.

Dr. MEYER: There is a mode of testing theories that are historical, and that
is you test them by comparing their explanatory power against their competitors.
You don’t do experiments about things that happened four billion years
ago.

Prof. KRAUSS: No, no, sorry, that’s not true. I do cosmology. It’s
historical. We make predictions based on what happened in the early universe
about what the abundance of helium and lithium in the universe should be, and
then we go out and measure it and the prediction’s either right or wrong.
We make predictions about...

Dr. MEYER: Right. You can make predictions about what you are likely to find.
But you don’t make predictions about the future in an historical science.

Prof. KRAUSS: You make--sure, the future are the observations you
(unintelligible).

Prof. MILLER: Oh, no. Natural selection makes testable predictions which can
be verified and are every day in the scientific literature.

Prof. KRAUSS: In fact, during our debate, people said, ‘What does intelligent
design propose? What history of life does it propose?’ And all they kept
doing was saying, ‘Well, there are problems with evolution.’ There
was no--it presents no framework for students to try and understand or increase
their knowledge or for scientists to do the same. It presents no coherent framework
for experimentation and observation and testing. And as a result, it’s
really vacuous.

FLATOW: All right. We’re going to take...

Dr. MEYER: We make an evidential case that is testable in the section of the
book debating design that’s coming out with Cambridge Press.

Dr. MEYER: They are being published in peer review journals, but the
journals are being started by advocates of the theory.

FLATOW: Gotcha.

Dr. MEYER: Just as there are advocates of molecular evolution.

FLATOW: All right. We’ve got to take a break.

Dr. MEYER: And all that’s coming.

FLATOW: See, you wanted to listen to me instead of the phone calls, you got
screaming. So stay with us while we all calm down. We’ll be back in just
a few moments.

I’m Ira Flatow, and this is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR
News.

(Announcements)

FLATOW: You’re listening to TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY. I’m
Ira Flatow. A brief program note: Next week on “Talk of the Nation”
on Monday, Neal Conan will broadcast from Los Angeles at NPR’s new West
Coast production center out there in LA. They’re going to be exploring
the hot-button issues that are shaping the West. That’s next Monday on
“Talk of the Nation.”

We’re talking this hour about our own hot-button issue--that is, teaching
evolution--with my guests, Stephen Meyer, the director of the Center for Science
and Culture at the Discovery Institute; Kenneth Miller, professor of biology
at Brown University; and Lawrence Krauss, professor of physics and a professor
of astronomy at Case Western Reserve University. Our number, 1 (800) 989-8255.

Let’s do some ying and yang on the telephone here. Let’s to go
Michael
in Savannah, Georgia.

Hi, Michael.

MICHAEL (Caller): How are you this afternoon, Ira?

FLATOW: Go ahead.

MICHAEL: I’m a Catholic priest. I recently read Dr. Miller’s book
“Finding Darwin’s God” and I e-mailed him and thanked him.
It’s an exceptionally fine presentation of the idea of Darwinian evolution
and theology. My greatest concern is that intelligent design is merely a repackaging
of creationism as a means to do an end run around the separation of church and
state. Intelligent design is ultimately a theistic idea that its proponents
want to have inserted into science curricula because they do not agree with
the Darwinian theory of evolution. It’s not a theory on its own, intelligent
design, it’s simply a repackaging that makes the whole idea of theism
palatable to school boards who are very much afraid of entering the church-state
division.

FLATOW: As a priest, you have no problem with the theory of evolution?

MICHAEL: None whatsoever. I firmly believe that God created the world, and
that the method he chose to do that is evolution. It’s a creating event
in the past and an ongoing creating event at this time.

Prof. MILLER: And the pope happens to agree with you on that. That has
come out.

MICHAEL: Well, he does. I think it was 1994 in his address to the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, the Holy Father said that this is a theory that, obviously,
has the weight of science behind it. The other problem is that people toss the
word ‘theory’ around as if it makes it somehow less meaningful.
That’s not the case at all. You know, the National Academy describes a
theory as a well-substantiated explanation, not just some idea that someone
has proposed.

But the greatest problem I have is the idea that the proponents of creationism
are using deception to influence school boards so that they can teach a theistic
view of the origins of species in public school, high school.

FLATOW: Stephen Meyer, are you feeling under attack on this one?

Dr. MEYER: No, I appreciate his concern, actually. This is, in fact, one of
the reasons that we wanted to make clear we were not lobbying to have intelligent
designed mandated in Ohio. We want time and space to develop a research program.
Larry Krauss called--or mentioned--I didn’t mean to say he called us a
name. He implied a minute ago that we were a lobbying organization. Yeah, we
have public policy concerns. We want to see academic freedom advanced. But we
support a lot of research, including experimental research. And I think that--so
I acknowledge the caller’s concern.

I would say there’s some very specific differences between the theory
of intelligent design and scientific creationism or biblical creationism, and
they come under two headings. One, content, and second, methodology. The case
that he and Dembski and I and others have made for design is based on evidence.
We’re not basing our models on biblical teaching. We’re making an
inference from biological evidence, not a deduction from religious authority.
Secondly, in content, if you look at the creationist literature, you’ll
find that they assert a number of things like a very young Earth and the like
that simply play no role in the theory of intelligent design.

The theory of intelligent design was launched--I think the starting point was
a book in 1984 called “The Mystery of Life’s Origin.” And
it really has not been primarily designed to create a subterfuge in order to
get into the public schools. That’s not our main agenda.

Prof. KRAUSS: Yeah, I have to say, having listened to everything Dr.Meyer just
said, that the people behind intelligent design in Ohio would be the first people
to disagree with him. An organization called Science Excellence for All Ohioans,
on their own Web site in Ohio...

Prof. MILLER: Exactly.

Prof. KRAUSS: ...put up a definition of intelligent design, and in that definition--this
wasn’t a peripheral comment; this was the definition--they said, ‘Design
theory is compatible with belief in God and the Bible.’ Then they also
said that naturalistic evolution is consistent with atheism. So my concern--it’s
the same as Michael’s, or Father Michael, our last caller, is that by
putting this dichotomy in the minds of students, we will convince students that
if they wish to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution, they
must abandon God. And as a Christian and as a person of faith and as a scientist,
I find that very disturbing. And unfortunately, I think that’s where intelligent
design is going to get us.

Prof. MILLER: And that is where a lot of students--when you ask people about
teaching both sides, a lot of students--I’ve gone to speak to groups of
students at fundamentalist colleges and their fear is that to believe in evolution,
you can’t believe in God. And there are many examples to the contrary
of that and there’s nothing--and so the point is that there is a separation
of church and state, and science and religion. And science is based on evidence,
testing, prediction. And a belief in God is based on faith. And the two are
forever separate. And it demeans both religion to try and pretend to be science,
and it certainly demeans science to pretend to be religion.

FLATOW: All right.

Dr. MEYER: You know, Ken Miller wrote a book, “Finding Darwin’s
God,” in which he asserted that Darwinian evolution was compatible with
religious belief. That’s all that people in Ohio said, that intelligent
design is compatible. To be compatible is not to be the same thing as...

Prof. KRAUSS: But see, they also said that evolution was not compatible. And
that was my point, was by putting...

Dr. MEYER: Well, I think there is some...

Prof. KRAUSS: ...a dichotomy about God into the science classroom, you do a
disservice to both science education and religion.

Prof. MILLER: Absolutely.

Prof. KRAUSS: And, unfortunately, that’s what you guys have been pushing
for.

Prof. MILLER: Yeah, I mean...

Dr. MEYER: Well, no, it isn’t.

Prof. MILLER: ...(unintelligible)...

Dr. MEYER: You guys are defining science as coextensive with the theory of
evolution. We want to say, you know--and what you’re presenting are a
lot of fears and consequentialist arguments. It really is time to put the focus
on the merits and on the evidence itself.

Prof. MILLER: Absolutely.

Dr. MEYER: There is a significant evidential challenge to Darwinism. It doesn’t
go away by saying that people who challenge it are religiously motivated. That
doesn’t make the challenge go away.

Prof. MILLER: It certainly not ...(unintelligible) the literature or the...

Dr. MEYER: It doesn’t do any benefit to science education to deny the
existence of that challenge and present a sanitized version of the theory simply
because you’re afraid of what fundamentalists in Georgia might do.

FLATOW: But do you think that science can prove that there is an intelligent
designer?

Dr. MEYER: I think that design is detectable through scientific means. That’s
the focus of Bill Dembski’s book. It’s a work of statistics.

FLATOW: Design of anything?

Dr. MEYER: Intelligence. You can detect an intelligent cause by certain key
signatures that the intelligent cause leaves behind. We use methods like this
in cryptography, archaeology.

Prof. MILLER: And would you suggest that...

Dr. MEYER: And one of the key indicators of intelligence is the presence of
information, and that happens to be also one of the key things that the Darwinian
mechanism at both the biological evolution level and the chemical evolution
level is having a difficult time explaining.

FLATOW: So if you found odd-looking things--pebbles in a stream, for
example...

Dr. MEYER: Well, take something like the Rosetta stone.

FLATOW: ...you could not explain that away, you would say that it’s evidence
of an intelligent design? I mean...

Prof. MILLER: Well, what about a snowflake?

Dr. MEYER: OK. You may have seen the movie “Contact,” Ira. You
know, and in
the movie “Contact”...

FLATOW: Well, that’s a movie.

Dr. MEYER: Yeah, sure, it’s a movie.

FLATOW: It’s a work of fiction.

Dr. MEYER: It’s a work of fiction. But the research methodology that’s
described in the movie is also the basis of the SETI program which is searching
for extraterrestrial intelligence. They’re looking for encoded information
in radio signals. If you’re an archaeologist and you look at the Rosetta
stone and you analyze the etchings and you realize, ‘This is a language,’
you know, made by intelligent...

FLATOW: Yeah, made by people.

Dr. MEYER: You infer intelligence.

FLATOW: Well...

Dr. MEYER: So we’re not saying--we’re saying you can detect intelligence
scientifically. The second order question of who the intelligence is, is something
that is left for philosophers to discuss.

Prof. MILLER: I absolutely agree with you in one sense. If I looked up in the
sky and saw stars lined up saying, ‘I am here,’ I would firmly believe
it was unlikely that that happened without some design. But I haven’t
seen it, and I certainly don’t want to teach students that such a thing
exists. And while it may be possible at some point to find evidence, on the
basis of what we now know and on the basis of all of the literature in scientific
journals, evolution is the basis of biology. And there’s no evidence for
intelligent design.

And it’s certainly worth--I certainly think it’s worth people like
yourself and others who believe that there may be some evidence to look for
it and then publish it in scientific journals that are subject to peer review
and after many, many, many tests, maybe eventually it’ll get into the
high school classroom. But it’s ridiculous to start talking about things
at the edge of biology in the high school classroom. You just don’t have
time. You want to teach the basis of modern biology just like you want to teach
the basis of modern physics. And I applaud efforts by people like yourself,
if you honestly believe there’s a scientific basis, to go out and do science
and subject yourself to the same scientific criticism that any of the rest of
us do every single day.

TRACY: I just want to make a comment. It seems to me that when scientists agree
upon a theory, they sometimes present it as a fact. And I think evolution is
a theory. I think it’s irresponsible science and irresponsible education
to present theory as a fact. And I think open discourse is good education.

Prof. MILLER: I agree with you completely that an open discourse is great education.
But this is a very important point. When scientists talk about a theory, it
has a different meaning than it does in sort of the popular language. A scientific
theory like Newton’s laws or like evolution is something that has been
subjected--it’s not hypothesis, it’s something that’s been
subjected to testing again and again and again and again and has satisfied those
tests. Now that doesn’t mean at some point in the future, it won’t
have to be modified. Science can never prove anything to be absolutely right.
It can only prove things to be wrong. But a scientific theory and the kind of
things we teach in the science classrooms in high school are those theories
that have satisfied the test of experiment over and over and over again. And
that’s what we mean when we talk about a scientific theory. And that’s
what we mean when we talk about Newton’s laws, which explain the motions
of baseballs and cannonballs and will from not just then but now and forever,
no matter what we learn at the fringe of physics. And that’s also the
case for evolution, which has been the basis of modern biology and modern biology
could not be done without the context of evolutionary theory, just as modern
physics could not be done without Newton’s laws.

Prof. MILLER: Tracy, are you still there?

Dr. MEYER: I’d like to agree with something.

FLATOW: Let me--I have to jump in and remind everybody that I’m Ira Flatow
and this is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY--I want to pay our bills--from
NPR News.

Dr. MEYER: And it’s your show.

Prof. MILLER: Ira.

FLATOW: I didn’t want to go there, but since you did--go ahead.

Prof. MILLER: Ira, with respect to what Tracy just said, she said we should
teach evolution as a theory. I wholeheartedly and completely agree. But the
important point--and I’ll put it as a biologist; Larry put it as a physicist--is
that evolution is a theory just like the cell theory or the germ theory of a
disease. And every one of those is subject to critical examination and testing
by science, just like evolution. Neither more, nor less.

Prof. KRAUSS: Absolutely.

Dr. MEYER: Yeah. And I agree substantially with this, with one caveat. I think
it’s important--a lot of people think that theory means something that
makes a scientific idea inherently weak. No, evolution is a theory. The question
is whether it’s a good theory or a bad theory and whether it explains
the things it sets out to explain. And the key thing it needs to explain is
the origin of biological form. And what we’re finding in the literature
within the field is there are significant doubts about whether or not the mechanism
of natural selection acting on random variation can produce things like the
new animal forms that arise in the Cambrian Explosion. That is something I think
my opponents are underestimating as far as the significance of the dissenting
opinion.

Prof. MILLER: No, we’re not underestimating. You’re just phrasing
it so carefully. You’re saying random mutation and natural selection.
But there are many other forces that clearly act in evolution, including gene
duplication, sexual recombination, lateral gene transfer and a whole host. And
the papers that you cite...

Dr. MEYER: Even acknowledging those, there is a significant problem with creating
new body plans. You acknowledged this much in our debate in Ohio.

Prof. MILLER: There are significant problem with many things in biology. There’s
even a problem in terms of ...(unintelligible).

Dr. MEYER: But that’s what the theory was supposed to explain.

FLATOW: Stephen, let him finish. Let him finish.

Dr. MEYER: Sorry.

Prof. MILLER: There’s even a problem in terms of how the body plan develops.
For example, let’s suppose you were challenging the idea that DNA is the
genetic material and I said, ‘No, I’m pretty sure that it is,’and
so is the consensus of the scientific community. You would then say,’OK,
give me a detailed account of how DNA makes a finger, for example.’ And
the answer, as any developmental biologist would tell you is we don’t
have the answer to that yet. That means that in effect the development of a
finger is a problem for developmental biology. Does that mean we need to invoke
outside supernatural agency to say that the body parts develop during embryology,
not from DNA but by an outside agency? I don’t think so. But that is exactly
what intelligent design seeks to do with respect to evolution.

Dr. MEYER: No, that’s not what we’re arguing. What we’re
arguing in the public schools...

FLATOW: You’ve got 15 seconds, Stephen.

Dr. MEYER: What we’re saying is if you don’t know how a body plan
develops, please tell students that. If you don’t know how life originated
from simple chemicals, tell them that. Don’t bluff.

Prof. MILLER: And there’s a lot we don’t know. But the point is
there’s a lot we do know, and that’s the key thing. Just the fact
we don’t know things doesn’t mean what we know is wrong.

FLATOW: Gentlemen, a brief snapshot and debate that I’m sure we’re
going to be continuing on for who knows till when. Thank you all. Stephen Meyer,
director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute; Kenneth
Miller, professor of biology at Brown University in Providence; Lawrence Krauss,
professor of physics and professor of astronomy at Case Western Reserve University.
Thanks again for joining us today.

Prof. MILLER: Thank you, Ira.

Dr. MEYER: Thanks, guys.

Prof. KRAUSS: Thanks.

FLATOW: Earlier we spoke to Deborah Owens-Fink, a member of the Ohio State
Board of Education.

(Credits)

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